art

The fall 2017 issue of the Public Press, which focused on some possible solutions to homelessness, inspired graphic designer Erik Schmitt to create informational labels he posted on single-room occupancy hotels listed as empty.

RADIO DOCUMENTARY / SLIDESHOW: Artist Anthony Holdsworth, who painted a series of urban landscapes that depicted a future San Francisco flooded by rising seas, was invited to show his work last year inside the new “green” San Francisco Federal Building at Seventh and Mission streets. But before the opening reception, the show was ordered taken down. He said the image in one of his paintings, of oil burning on a flooded sidewalk in front of the building was too similar to the news footage of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for federal authorities to bear. Undeterred, Holdsworth is mounting a new art show at the cafe at SFMOMA.

In September 2009, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude returned to Northern California for the 33-year anniversary of their “Running Fence” (1976) installation and to film “The Running Fence Revisited” (2010), directed by Wolfram Hissen and sponsored by the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

During the filming, author Erin Van Rheenen did double duty as both writer and girl Friday for the crew. Between takes she interviewed Jeanne-Claude and Christo — at the Petaluma Denny's, at a reunion picnic and in the car as they traced the route of where the fence had run. She may have been the last to interview Jeanne-Claude, who died suddenly on Nov. 18, 2009, at the age of 74.

The scenes described in the story first appeared in a slightly different form as the program for the documentary’s West Coast premiere back in June.

The Aquatic Park Bathhouse Building at the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park at Beach and Polk streets is emerging from a rehabilitation project with a noticeable facelift. The Bathhouse was built in 1939 by the Works Project Administration and became the park’s Maritime Museum in 1951. The building, which was designed to resemble the bridge of an ocean liner, is teeming with sea-themed art, none more striking that Hilaire Hiler’s “Undersea Life” mural, which has also been restored.

On a cool Friday night in March, near the corner of Haight and Steiner streets in San Francisco, the hip boutique Tweekin Records hosted an unusual gallery opening of paintings, sketches, poetry and elaborate collages. It was created by inmates at San Quentin State Prison.

Organized by Kate Deciccio, an artist and a mental health and substance abuse counselor in San Francisco, the exhibit featured her own work, along with work by Eddie Sanchez and “Absent” Helean from San Quentin, and by inmates in the John Howard Pavilion at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. — Deciccio’s former employers.

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